Huddle Up: Katie Heindl

Have you ever met someone and instantly thought “Wow, this person gets it”? That's how I felt the first time I spoke with journalist Katie Heindl. Her approach to writing about hoops is anchored in the human—and emotional—context of the game. The Information Age makes sports an ecosystem full of hot takes, stats, and registering our disgust on the internet. It's a breath of fresh air anytime we see someone focusing on the trials and triumphs behind the game and humanize the players. We admire Katie's work—and collaboration—and enjoyed getting to learn more about her in this interview. We hope you do, too! 

What was your entry point into sports and writing? When did you decide to combine the two interests? 

The entry point was a joke, in the literal sense.The first real basketball writing I did was NBA fiction for David Roth’s old website, The Classical, a kind of early internet Grantland-ish blog. Stories about Paul Pierce being a vampire, Chuck Hayes escaping a bandit gang led by Matt Barnes in the Wild West, Jimmy Butler trying to lead the moody teen werewolves in Minnesota, Phil Jackson attempting to put together a superteam of Frankenstein’s monsters with injured players’ body parts – you get the idea. Something about approaching sportswriting with no stakes, no stats, with humour and creativity, was a more appealing on-ramp into a field I knew was male dominated and hyper-critical.

What are some ways that basketball inspires you? Does that inspiration inform your life or your work in any way?

Feats, witnessing the seemingly unbelievable happen night after night; the vulnerability of basketball, its inherent up-close-and-personalisms, seeing emotions flicker across an athletes’ face in real time – these all inform my work and pique my curiosity to extrapolate on the pulse running through the game. I wield that impulse in a lot of my life, trying to get at the thing under the thing, to my own detriment on occasion.

We’d love to hear more about Basketball Feelings. What is it about the emotional component of the game that feels so compelling?

Basketball is so proximal. Bodies and faces are bare – you can see grins and grimaces – athletes are so close to the audience. Even without mics you can pick up cross-talk and admonishments, every kind of chatter. It forces you to engage at a deeper level than just a passive viewer because you can so clearly watch the people playing going through it. If you’re at all empathetic and curious, then you immediately clue into all the storylines unfolding in a game beyond the action of the game itself.

And of course, the individual stories of the game and its athletes are endless.

We’re both so interested in the human component of sports. The journey is often as compelling as the actual on-court heroics. What are some ways that you see basketball being a metaphor for life, and life being a metaphor for basketball?

Fandom and sports are often treated as these separate bubbles outside “real life” and its intersections, and those intersectional stressors. Culture, history, politics, science, art, even climate, all these things intersect with sports and to me, offer complicated but compelling glimpses into the way we interact with each other and life. Nothing exists in isolation and if anything, that’s the power and perhaps leveller of sports. What can we learn from these microcosms and apply to life, more broadly?  

What did you learn about Dwyane Wade during the research phase of your story? Did your opinion of Wade change in any way?

As someone who was closer to Wade toward the end of his career than the beginning I was interested to find him in his early days as a slightly self-conscious figure. His concerns of figuring out the kind of athlete he was, person he was, the aspirations of his career trajectory alongside this behemoth gravitational superstar of LeBron James – like of course he’d be going through it, but it’s a side of athletes we rarely see period, and even less with those of Wade’s calibre. I came away with the impression of much more depth than I started with.

What's it like being a credentialed NBA journalist? Has the surreal nature of having that kind of access to players worn off yet? 

I have this handshake deal with myself that when or if the surreal feeling of being in locker rooms, scrums, even wandering arena tunnels ever wears off, then it’s time to take a step back. Much of being in and around the game as media is spent waiting – for people to show up, finish practice or a game, shower, be “ready” to talk (which is a whole other thing, because physically being in front of someone with a mic in your face doesn’t mean you’re ready). That part can be tedious but it’s also when a lot of my most serendipitous moments have happened. Like running into coaches and having unexpected chats, or seeing mascots off the clock. I think an element some media struggle with is not to let the routine turn into tediousness that blunts the experience, or the people. 

It sounds like you’re working on a new book. Can you tell us more? What is the inspiration for that huge undertaking? 

I am! “Working on a new book” feels advantageous, though, as someone who is working on their first book. It’s a book of essays with the wonderful folks at Transit Books that examines the intersections in and around basketball that I mentioned earlier, in a blend of reporting, criticism, and personal narrative. 

Who is in your all-time starting five for NBA hoopers?

Rasheed Wallace, Kyle Lowry, Dennis Rodman, Cheryl Miller, Russell Westbrook.

What is one piece of advice you’d share with other creative people who want to go after their dreams? 

There’s no timeline. I’ve spoken with so many people, be them out of school or second-careerists, who worry over whether they’ve wasted time or are making the right decisions. As someone who had many other full careers before this one, I can see the way they all served this current path and even nudged me toward it – though sometimes I ignored the nudges. Start small. Carve out a couple hours here and there in your day to do the thing you feel pulling at you. The most boring advice is often the truest which is: incremental gains add up, time takes time, make little goals and big aspirational ones, just keep working. 

Keep up With Katie
Substack: Basketball Feelings
Dwyane Wade Story: A Conduit Between Worlds